


Slowtown

by treehousehomes



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Hallucinations, M/M, References to Depression, References to Drugs, Time Shenanigans, alleged time bends but who knows really, josh is angry, teenage angst and rebellion and stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:15:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7080529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treehousehomes/pseuds/treehousehomes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shrugged. “Well, come whenever you want to walk slowly for a while.”<br/>“The hell I will do.”</p><p>Josh is angry, Tyler is scared. Two people colliding at different speeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I just had this idea late at night and i'm not entirely sure where i'm taking it yet but should be good, have fun and stuff, yay. Also I'm no native speaker so don't judge me if I mess up from time to time ("time" aye) pls and thanks

Every time Josh drove out here he had to listen to the same lecture about not stopping anywhere when driving out into the forest. Today had been no different and since he hadn’t been out here in a month his parents’ “we-don’t-even-want-you-to-go”- lecture was especially long and their acceptance of his coping method had been buried under their doubts again. Eventually, he had managed to make his way to the car with a last bunch of words yelled after him that reached his brain in a scrambled mess. Or, Josh thought, maybe the words reached him normally and his brain was the scrambled mess. One way or the other, he could finally drive.

 

His parents honestly couldn’t blame Josh for this one. A tiny figure stood in the middle of the road right in front of him, hands in front of his eyes, whether to shield the light or to not see whoever was about to run him over, he couldn’t tell. You never knew, people out here were mad. Whatever his actual goal was, Josh managed to stop right in front of him. Slowly, the other guy moved away his hands squinting at him with an annoyed expression as if to say ‘turn the bloody headlights off’. Josh didn’t. Finally, he turned to walk around the car, opened the door and jumped in.

“What the heck?”

“I’m not going to rob you.”

Well, thanks for that. Josh looked across to the boy that had invited himself into his car. He was wearing black jeans and a white singlet that was covered in dirt, and no jacket, which was far from appropriate for the weather. His brown eyes were bloodshot and his hair a mess.

“Nice. So you’re no robber, just a drug-addict?”

“Can you just drive?” He didn’t sound demanding, merely exhausted.

“Where to? What the heck dude, you just jumped into my car. I don’t have to drive you anywhere”

“Please.”

Josh didn’t know what he was doing or why, or where he was going. It seemed as if his parents weren’t completely wrong when they deemed him incapable to drive and to make any clear decisions. They were alright with him going because they didn’t expect him having to make any of the latter as long as he didn’t stop. Which he never planned to do anyway, as he had assured them too many times. So much for that.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Can you slow down a little?”

Josh sped up. The other boy looked at him, his eyes panicky and his hands starting to tremble.

“I’m Josh. I’m a great driver.”

“Tyler. Please stop.”

He slammed on the breaks. Tyler flinched. Damn right.

“So you wanna get out?”

“N-no, please just don’t drive so fast.”

Josh shook his head, but still did what he had asked. “What were you thinking standing in the middle of the road?”

“People out here aren’t the most cooperative when it comes to picking up hitchhikers.”

“Wonder why.”

“Also, there was the possibility of you just running me over and that’s better than sitting on the side of the road all night.” He smiled, which made it hard to tell whether he was serious or joking. Interesting sense of humour if it was the latter.

“I could still hit a tree anytime. My parents worry about that a lot.”

“No, they don’t.”

Whatever, boy. “Where are you from?”

“Slowtown”, he looked away from Josh and stared out into the darkness. “Haven’t been home in a long time, though.”

Wow, and here he was thinking he was insane enough.

 

“Do you ever stop?” Tyler had been sleeping for the past twenty minutes, which didn’t make much of a difference, considering that he barely spoke.

“I stop when I’m home.”

“I’m not coming to your home.”

“Well, we are sort of close.”

“No!” He looked around, his gaze quickly jumping from house to house and car to car, then shifting back to Josh. “We have to turn around!”

“We don’t have to do anything.”

“Josh, please.”

“Freaking hell, dude, where do you want to go then?” He couldn’t believe he was considering driving this stranger home when he was almost at my own house. He didn’t owe him anything.

“Just where you picked me up.”

“Tyler, that’s two hours away!” And there was absolutely nothing out there. Absolutely no reason for him to spend the night there. “Where do you live?”

“I don’t want to go there.”

Josh groaned. “Then get out. Right here. I’m tired and I really don’t care.”

“But you do.” His exhausted expression turned into a slight smirk. Man, he had nerves.

 

Josh’s parents would kill him. He had just come from the petrol station, filled up the tank on their card and driven back out into the nothingness. Tyler next to him had fallen silent again.

“You’ve got some explaining to do.”

“I don’t like the city.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too fast.”

“Meaning?” Jeez, he was exhausting. Josh was way too tired for this.

“Everyone is driving too fast and spending their money too fast, when they get their speeding tickets. And then working too fast so they can pay their fines.”

“You really are crazy.”

“Maybe.”

 

When they finally arrived somewhere close to where Josh had picked the boy up (and, frankly, he didn’t care how close exactly it was), he stopped. The stupid boy next to him had fallen asleep and Josh would describe his tiny figure as peaceful, with his head slightly crooked to the side, but he looked pretty much the same when awake, only topped off by a creepy stare into the darkness.

“We’re there, you can get out now.”

He opened his eyes and slowly turned over to Josh. “Anyone’s ever told you, you have beautiful eyes?” Josh seriously couldn’t understand how he managed to smile, yawn and keep his psycho gaze on, all at the same time.

“You aren’t funny. Get. Out.”

“You should come with me. Slowtown’s nice.”

“There is no such place out here. You’re insane and I don’t enjoy being murdered in my sleep, thank you very much.”

He shrugged. “Well, come whenever you want to walk slowly for a while.”

“The hell I will do.”

“Thanks.” Tyler leaned over, kissed him on the cheek and before Josh could even say anything he had jumped out of the car and shut the door, walking away into the forest. What was up with him? And more importantly, what was up with Josh? He looked at the bright numbers on his radio. Four in the morning. He had to be in college in three hours and a two hour drive ahead of him. Amazing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Josh always felt disconnected. At some point in his life he had started assembling this giant brick wall all around him that kept him from going out and everyone else from coming in. That wall had only gotten thicker the older he got. Nowadays, Josh was surprised whenever someone actually knew his name. He did talk to people sometimes, but he could never find anything interesting about them. Not that his opinion mattered in in the long run, since people tended to leave before he even had the time to walk away himself. Basically, he had two options going for him. One was faking a personality as flat as everyone else’s, which made him fade into the crowd and got him some fake small-talky conversations, or he could be himself, which wasn’t actually an option because he couldn’t let anyone know about his madness.

 

Today was definitely not the day to talk to anyone in college. When strangers complimented him on his bright red hair, he ignored them and when his classmates asked him about assignments, he told them he had no clue. He didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t want to be at home either. Because at home, his parents were waiting and he wouldn’t know what to tell them.

 

“Josh is that you?” He had tried to open the door as quietly as possible. Of course it hadn’t worked. His dad was already in the hallway.

“What were you thinking? You’re mum was worried sick and you think you can simply send a text at ten in the morning after you didn’t come home all night?” His dad’s tone had turned from borderline screaming to hissing over the course of this one sentence and Josh didn’t know which one was scarier.

“I, uh, It’s hard to explain.”

“Well you better come up with an explanation rather quickly because I’m waiting.”

“I… just wanted to drive for a bit longer and then I got lost.” Josh tried to sound confident, which wasn’t exactly his forte.

“So you got lost in the neighbourhood?”

What? He looked at his dad in confusion.

“Josh, we saw you driving past the house last night.”

“Oh yeah, I just did two rounds, you know, making the drive longer and that.”

“Who was in the car with you?”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no.

“I, uh, ah just a, uhm, friend.”

“And who is this ‘uhm friend’?”

“Someone from college, no big deal, really.” Josh made another attempt at shrugging it off.

His dad sighed. “Josh, your mum and I have decided, we can’t let you go out there anymore. It’s too dangerous and every single time you go we can’t sleep for even a second before you come back.”

Josh started to tremble. “No, dad, no. I need to.”

“You can’t, Josh”

“I can’t make it without.”

“Josh, we love you. You can talk to us, maybe try going to therapy again, there are other ways.”

“You don’t understand. If you love me let me drive.” He tried his best to sound calm. It was as if he could feel his blood flowing faster and faster as his heartbeat rose.

“No, Josh. It’s for the best.”

“You can’t stop me.” His voice had started to get a threatening undertone. This wasn’t good.

“Do not talk to me like that, Josh. We are locking the garage from now on. End of discussion.”

Josh charged at the first thing he could find. His mum’s flowers came crashing down from the windowsill, soil spreading out all over the floor. His face was hot from anger. He hated his family. He hated this house. Having heard the noise, his mum opened the door to the living room, tears in her eyes and a fearful expression on her face. It should’ve probably broken Josh’s heart. But he didn’t care. Why would she be scared, anyway? It’s not like he would ever hurt any actual person. He never had. Also, it wasn’t his fault that his dad loved to agitate him. He had to let all of that out somehow.

“You’re cleaning that.”

“Whatever.” And with that, Josh ran into his room and slammed the door, not planning to come out ever again.


	2. Save the World or Die Trying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josh is very bad at making decisions

After his dad had forbidden him to go for drives, Josh had refused to even leave his room for dinner. The only time he snuck out was when his parents were asleep, so he could get something to eat on the days when his mum didn’t cave in and brought some food to his room. It had been more than a week now and the pull inside of Josh would not subside. Sometimes he even thought about the boy in the woods, but mostly he just wanted to be out. Josh was terrified of not being able to leave and it lead him to build a few extra centimetres around his walls. He didn’t talk to anyone, even his teachers had to ask him several times to get any answer out of him.

It was 3am, ten days after his outburst, and Josh was in the basement quite literally drumming his heart out on his electric drum kit. It was a miracle that his parents let him play in the middle of the night and only with the electric drum kit as a compromise had they been okay with Josh owning such a loud and aggressive instrument. Although the tapping noise was still audible on the floor above, they had to leave Josh some of the things he liked, even if they themselves disliked most of them.

Josh had given up on playing along to the songs blasting from his speakers. None of them seemed to capture his feelings in the right way anymore and he had instead shifted to playing one angry drum solo after the other. When he was most emotional, he was always at his best and today he was sure that, if he kept going, he could one day be as great as his idols. At least his parents finally let him dye his hair so he could feel closer to being _almost_ like Tré Cool. There was one thing, though, that even his perfect playing couldn’t keep from happening. As Josh set off to finish his solo in the perfect manner, the stick in his left hand suddenly cracked. One half got spliced off which left the rest of the stick in a strange bent way, definitely no case to be fixed. Frustrated, he finished the movement of his right hand and hit the drum one more time before getting up to get new sticks. Only he had run out. Josh screamed in frustration and threw the single functional drum stick against the wall where it fell down onto one of his speakers before hitting the ground. He stormed out of the room and up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, and plopped down on his bed as soon as he got to his room. Why did the world have to hate him? Whatever his previous self had done wrong in his last life, he wanted to punch that guy.

It was 4am and Josh really did not feel like sleeping yet. He felt incomplete, not having been able to finish practising and having to go through the hassle of going out to get new drum sticks the next day. He was lazily scrolling through his facebook timeline, when a post caught his attention. Amongst all the selfies of the fun days out in town (while the sun tended to make Josh stay inside more, everyone else had apparently ventured out to amazing adventures in the large city centre that had oh so many interesting things to offer), he found a post from a news page regarding a recent wildfire. Very recent. As in, right now recent.

Josh felt another adrenaline rush as he read through the article. It was an uninhabited part of the forest, where no one expected anyone to be. Except Josh knew there was a specific place, where someone may or may not be, just at this moment. If he went out there to save this guy’s life his parents surely couldn’t keep him from driving anymore, right? Josh chuckled to himself. An opportunity that couldn’t be passed on.

His parents were honestly not the best at hiding whatever thing they didn’t want Josh to find. He had “accidently” stumbled across a lot of Christmas present when he was younger and he knew every corner of this house. He could’ve found the keys earlier, but he needed a decent reason to go on a search. With weird treeboy he had a good reason (Not the crazy guy himself though, obviously, just the proposed hero state). It almost seemed as if his parents had left the keys to the garage out on purpose because Josh didn’t even have to look any further than the pocket of his dad’s jacket. What a joke.

Josh had been driving for over an hour and the constant repeat of the fire alert on the radio was giving him headaches. But he had to keep on listening, had to make sure he was kept up to date and ready to jump in when his newly invented heroic alter ego was needed. He was getting closer to the spot where he picked up the strange boy not too long ago and so far he had not seen anything suspicious, which meant he must be on time to save him. Surely enough, he soon saw the small bus stop that he had dropped Tyler off at. Why they had a bus stop out here, he would never understand.

Josh parked the car in front of the sign and got out. He turned to face the wall of trees next to him and slowly started walking. At this point it dawned on him that he didn’t actually have a clue where this guy would be hiding or how big the area was, that he was about to search through. As soon as he had gotten out of the car, the cold had made him burn his energy reserves and what was left of his euphoric state had been dropped down to baseline. He didn’t like what his now clear mind was suggesting. That he had messed up royally.

“Well, might as well walk now”, Josh thought to himself. Maybe it was as good as driving after all. He found a small path that let away from the road and started following it towards the left.

The dim moon light let the trees look as if they were straight from an x files episode and Josh’s flashlight was not the brightest thing he’d ever seen, almost leaving him in complete darkness. He felt a bit like Fox Mulder and he would never complain about such a feeling. Only that he wasn't going to find cool aliens, but only a dumb boy.

Josh had been walking for fifteen minutes now and he began to feel more and more like his new superhero alter ego had already left him to search for a more worthy subject. And as it turned out, walking was definitely not as therapeutic as driving. Far from it. He had hit his knees while falling over a root that had stayed hidden from the dim light of his flashlight by being just about the same stupid colour as the ground, and the hand that was holding the flashlight had been attacked by mosquitos until he was sure there was barely any blood left to be sucked out from under his skin.

“Screw this”, Josh muttered to no one in particular and turned around on the spot. He was going to simply drive home and maybe, if he was lucky, he would be able to sneak in and his parents would never know.

But this wouldn’t be Josh’s life, if something didn’t go wrong. In this case, it was the fact that the brightness of his flashlight seemed to be decreasing. Oh no. He started to run, stumbling over roots, twigs poking at his face, as the narrow path suddenly seemed a lot longer than it was when he came. Eventually, his light turned into the tiniest glow that couldn’t even light up his hand when he held it a centimetre away from the device. Just great. Josh stopped in his track. He was surrounded by absolute darkness and he had no clue where to walk. Even when his eyes started to get used to the total lack of light, he could barely see the track ahead. He hated the moon for being this tiny curved line in the sky instead of being full tonight. 

What was he supposed to do now? Was he going to die out here in the forest? Eaten by bears or whatever was roaming the woods? Or killed by the fire that was inevitably coming close? Was that smoke he smelled in the air? Josh made up a dozen scenarios in his head that all ended pretty badly for him. There didn't seem to be a good way out of here.

“Argh!” Getting so lost in his thoughts of desperation, Josh hadn’t noticed the tiny figure walking behind him with accelerated steps, but silent as a ghost, until it was already too late.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was all kinda reflective and dialogue-less, but in the next chapter stuff will really pick up and I'll get the whole Slowtown theme in so yay


	3. Today, day, I want to go away, way,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josh doesn't know what's happening, but it doesn't seem too bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me forever to update this, I had to sorta figure out where I wanna take this and how to start off, but I'm done now, and I am v excited to write down all of those ideas I have so I'll be quicker yay.

Being tied to a tree in complete darkness wasn’t how Josh had pictured his hero state. This annoying girl had tackled him in the forest and then proceeded to drag him here. All he could catch from her looks was a glimpse of blonde hair yet she had been somehow able to navigate her way through the maze of trees and roots in the dark without tripping a single time. She hadn’t said a word in reply to his never-ending ramblings about how there was a fire and they might die and, oh, also he would appreciate if they didn’t sacrifice him in some wood ritual or whatever their plans were. He felt a bit panicked and he had kind of wanted to punch her, but every single one of his pathetic tries to escape had been met with a move of indescribable speed and foresight, which did not exactly help calm Josh’s nerves, either.

 

All he could hear from his position was faint voices, sometimes becoming louder or more mixed up, but never stopping completely. That is, until one particular sound seemed to approach him. It was a creepy clicking, that, in another situation would have been pleasant to Josh, being fairly similar to the noise two drumsticks made when hitting each other. In this setting, however, it made his skin crawl and his head swirl with graphic images of satanic rituals he had seen on TV. His mum’s rants about the terrible effects of TV shows on a child’s psyche popped up in his head until his thoughts were interrupted by a faint light shining from behind him. He was suddenly able to see half of his own shadow in front of him, from the shoulders upwards it was unfortunately cut off by …nothing? Oh, how grand. They were about to push him off a cliff then.

The light made a turn and the blonde girl was now standing right in front of Josh lightly tapping something on a flashlight, making the ray of light pulse uncomfortably. Eventually she turned the light towards what turned out to be a knife in her right hand, the blade sending the light reflection straight into Josh’s eyes. Josh winced. What was these peoples’ plan?

“Please don’t kill me. I’ve never done anything wrong, I swear.”

She ignored him and leaned over, her knife pointed directly in Josh’s direction. In a desperate attempt, Josh tried to lean away as far as possible.

But apparently, for now, this person wasn’t planning to kill him, as she simply severed the ropes bound around Josh’s ankles and pulled him to his feet.

“Where am I?” Josh sighed. Of course he didn’t get an answer. The girl handed him the flashlight and kept on walking in silence.

 

Josh had thought about running, but with his previous experiences he figured there wasn’t much of a point. So he followed her for what seemed like ages until he could see light flicker through the trees.

“So, you made it to Slowtown after all, Josh.” A familiar figure came walking towards them, smiling in the faint light Josh was pointing at him.

“Yeah, all it took was for you to kidnap me.”

“Ah yeah, sorry about that. Jenna doesn’t talk much and she was just protecting you.”

“Oh that makes perfect sense.” Josh didn’t hide his sarcasm. Why had he decided to come looking for the stupid boy in the first place?

Tyler sighed. “I’m serious. There’s some weird people out here. Anyway, we’re almost there.’”

 

They walked a couple hundred metres further towards the bright yellow light until Tyler stopped in front of a giant white marble archway that looked entirely out of place in the dark green of the forest. It seemed as if someone had flown to Greece, picked up a couple of old ruins and then dumped them here, in the middle of nowhere, for whatever reason one might do that. Josh shot Tyler a puzzled look. Tyler simply made a waving gesture, motioning for the other boy to walk through the arc. Again, Josh found himself doing what he told him, not even thinking about the absurdity of the whole situation.

He didn’t notice much of a difference after he had come out on the other side. Weirdly though, everything seemed a little bit brighter and he appeared to not need his flashlight anymore, but that was probably a figment of his imagination, or maybe it was getting lighter as the night went on. Which also reminded him of how screwed he was when his parents found out they had no way of getting to work the next morning.

 

“Everything seems brighter, am I right?” Josh couldn’t believe that Tyler had the audacity to smirk at him _again._

“Not really, I don’t think. You’re just crazy.”

“No doubt about that. But trust me, you’ll love this place.”

Josh groaned, but still followed Tyler and Jenna in the direction of what looked like a tree house. Wow, could this get any more cliché? Then again, it kind of reminded him of his childhood, when his dad had built a small platform on the large chestnut tree in the backyard. Josh tried to push away the excitement that was pressing his feet to walk faster so that they could climb up the ladder to enjoy the view. Because what the heck? He had never even wanted to come to this place.

Nevertheless, when they arrived at the bottom of the tree, Josh had started jumping up and down and smiling like a little kid. He couldn’t wait to be up in the trees, bathed in moonlight and seeing the stars from up close.

“See, that’s the spirit, Josh.” Tyler smirked yet again.

The boy’s expression triggered a thought that started nagging at the back of Josh’s brain reminding him that he should hate this place and making him wonder why he didn’t. His mood shifted as he remembered Tyler’s red eyes from the week before.

“What did you do to me? Did you drug me?”

“Just relax, Josh. You’re fine.” Tyler’s soothing words reached him and formed a bubble around the worrying thoughts, inhibiting any communication with the rest of Josh’s brain. He started smiling again, then laughing hysterically as the rope ladder was swaying back and forth while he was climbing it.

 

Josh hadn’t felt this good in a long time. Tyler, Jenna and him were sitting on the floor of the tree house and spent half the time talking enthusiastically about whatever ridiculous topic they could come up with and the other half trying to escape their endless laughing fits.

“Aliens are totally real, guys.” Josh yelled, when they spotted a blinking red light in between the stars. The stars were so much brighter out here, and he found himself wishing he lived somewhere far from the pollution of the big city. Like out here. Or in space.

“Dude, that’s a freaking air plane,” Jenna grinned, “and besides, don’t be ridiculous. Aliens are made up so that nerdy children like you can enjoy unrealistic TV shows and think they know anything about science.”

“The X-Files aren’t unrealistic! It’s all based on scientific theories. How do you know how much the government fools us? Don’t trust anyone, Scully.” He sent a hopeful glance towards Tyler.

“Aliens are kinda scary, man, I don’t know, I don’t wanna think about them abducting me and performing experiments.”

Jenna looked pleased. And Josh felt like he really wanted to protect the anxious boy from this tendency of imagining the worst at all times.

 

They sat like this until the sun cast the first light over the sky, not yet being visible at the horizon itself.

“Hey, I’ve got college today,” he laughed. Since when was there anything funny about college?

“Yeah, dude, we do, too.” Josh had kind of just expected them to be living here doing nothing. Clearly, his brain wasn’t in the best state, because there wasn’t even a kitchen in this place, even though three beds were surely cramped next to each other in the tiny space the tree house offered. Three. As if it had been made for them.

“Well, I’ve got late classes. I say we take a nap before we go.” Tyler gestured over to the beds.

Josh did have class early, but he might as well skip. He didn’t care enough about calculus, especially not now. He looked at his phone to check the time, which, surprisingly told him it was only 5am. He had only been here for less than an hour, when it felt like five. He brushed away the thoughts that tried to confuse him with logical arguments and set his alarm for 11am, so that he could make it to his 12pm class.

All three of them collapsed onto the beds, Tyler in the middle, with Josh on the right and Jenna on the left. The small house didn’t allow for spaces between the beds so at one point in the tired conversation that was about to fade out, Josh found himself staring at the features of the boy that was lying next to him. He had a cute nose and his full lips were moving as he was talking, eyes crinkly from the happy topic. Josh didn’t swing that way, but he could still see that Tyler was pretty. Of course that wasn’t something he would tell anyone. Guys couldn’t judge the level of attractiveness of other guys, they were oblivious to it, as he had explained to his friends various times when they asked him if he thought Evan or Luke or Matt were attractive (he didn’t think they were).

 

When his alarm went off, Josh felt weirdly awake considering the small amount of hours he actually slept. Not that he was complaining. Since there was no kitchen, the three agreed to skip breakfast and to go straight to lunch in the campus cafeteria. Josh’s stomach was grumbling, but there obviously wasn’t much he could do about that. After the hour long drive, Josh dropped the two off at their campus before driving to his own. It only now dawned on him what he had done and how mad his parents would be and he cursed under his breath before getting out of the car and strolling over to the large building in the middle of campus, still in the clothes he was wearing the night before.


End file.
